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WORK TITLE: Legacies of the Rue Morgue
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE:
CITY:
STATE:
COUNTRY:
NATIONALITY:
https://www.sas.upenn.edu/french/people/andrea-goulet * https://www.sas.upenn.edu/french/sites/www.sas.upenn.edu.french/files/2016CV-for%20website.pdf * http://www.upenn.edu/pennpress/book/15420.html
RESEARCHER NOTES:
LC control no.: n 2005094278
LCCN Permalink: https://lccn.loc.gov/n2005094278
HEADING: Goulet, Andrea
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040 __ |a DLC |b eng |e rda |c DLC |d MoSU |d PU
100 1_ |a Goulet, Andrea
373 __ |a University of Pennsylvania |2 naf
373 __ |a University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign |2 naf
374 __ |a College teachers |2 lcsh
375 __ |a female
377 __ |a eng
670 __ |a Optiques, 2006: |b t.p. (Andrea Goulet)
670 __ |a Crime fictions, 2005: |b t.p. (Andrea Goulet) p. 190 (asst. prof. of French at University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign)
670 __ |a University of Pennsylvania, Department of Romance Languages, WWW site, viewed June 22, 2015: |b French and Francophone studies, people (Andrea Goulet, associate professor of Romance languages; nineteenth- and twentieth-century French fiction, critical theory, science and literature, detective fiction, nouveau roman)
953 __ |a lf02
PERSONAL
Female.
EDUCATION:Yale University, B.A. (summa cum laude), 1989; New York University, M.A., 1991; Yale University, Ph.D., 1999.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Scholar, educator, and writer. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, assistant professor of French, 1999-2006, associate professor, 2006-08; University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, associate professor of romance languages, 2008-2016, professor, 2016–, also graduate chair, French.
MEMBER:Nineteenth-Century French Studies Association (cochair), Phi Beta Kappa.
Marguerite Peyre Dissertation Prize in French, c. 1999.
WRITINGS
Contributor to books, including Sébastien Japrisot: The Art of Crime, edited by Martin Hurcombe and Simon Kemp, Rodopi, 2009; Progress in Brain Research: Literature, Neurology and Neuroscience: History and Modern Perspectives, edited by Anne Stiles, Stanley Finger, and François Boller, Elsevier, 2013; Edgar Allan Poe in Context, edited by Kevin J. Hayes, Cambridge University Press, 2013; and Of Elephants & Roses: French Natural History 1790-1830, American Philosophical Society Museum, 2013.
Contributor of articles and book reviews to periodicals, including Bulletin of the History of Medicine, Cahiers Victoriens et Edouardiens, Contemporary French Civilization, Dix-Neuf, L’Esprit Créateur, Modern Language Quarterly, Nineteenth-Century French Studies, Nineteenth-Century Literature Criticism, Romanic Review, Romantisme, SubStance, and Yale French Studies.
Coeditor with Susanna Lee of special issues of Yale French Studies titled “Crime Fictions,” spring, 2005; and coeditor with Michael travel of special issue of French Civilization titled “Visual Culture,” summer-fall, 2004. Member of the editorial board of Modern Languages Open; review editor and editorial board member of French Forum; and associate editor of Contemporary French Civilization.
SIDELIGHTS
A scholar of French literature, Andrea Goulet specializes in nineteenth- and twentieth-century French fiction, critical theory, science and literature, detective fiction, and nouveau roman. She is a contributor to professional journals and the author of Optiques: the Science of the Eye and the Birth of Modern French Fiction.
Optiques
In her first book, Optiques, Goblet presents a study of French novels in relation to the visual and to the philosophical and scientific discourse about the nature of sight that occurred in the nineteenth century.
In her discussion of French novels, from French realism and detective fiction to science fiction and fantastical literature written from 1830 to 1910, Goulet presents her case that various scientific debates of the time helped shape key narrative forms in French novels. For example, she discusses Honoré Balzac’s Comédie humaine within the debate between idealism and materialism. Discussing the fiction of Jules Verne and others, Goulet examines the debate between objective and subjective vision.
According to Eduardo A. Febles, writing for French Forum, Goulet’s primary thesis “revolves around an epistemic shift registered in the science of optics from an idealized model based on deductive a priori rules … to an empirical inductive method.” Essentially, Goulet’s critical view of the modern novel stresses the genealogy of popular fictional genres in accordance to bodily options of sight. “The book folds together quite successfully scientific treatises with literary works without falling into the trap of making one the substrate of the other,” wrote French Forum contributor Febles.
Legacies of the Rue Morgue
In her next book, Legacies of the Rue Morgue: Space and Science in French Crime Fiction, Goulet once again turns to scientific discourses to discuss fiction, this time focusing French crime fiction. The discourses she draws from are primarily in the areas of cartography, geology, and geography. Goulet starts with the 1841 story “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” by Edgar Allen Poe as the beginning framework, noting that she believes Poe created the genre of crime fiction. Goulet then goes on to examine how violence, space, and nation shifted over time in French crime fiction from the 1860s to modern day cyberpunk novels.
Goulet presents her case that the history of spatial sciences helps clarify the fundamental tensions found in French crime fiction, such as the tension between brutal murder and reason. As the sciences underlying her analysis make extensive use of strata and grids, Goulet employs vertical (archaeohistorical) and horizontal (cartological) axes to orient and inform her close readings of crime novels. In the process, she provides a new spatial history of modern crime fiction and how fictional investigation sites in French crime fiction reveal deep rifts in France’s national identity and unease with violent disruptions to society. C.B. Kerr, writing in Choice, called Legacies of the Rue Morgue “a tour de force.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Choice, June, 2016. C.B. Kerr, review of Legacies of the Rue Morgue: Science, Space, and Crime Fiction in France, p. 1480.
French Forum, winter-spring, 2008, Eduardo A. Febles, review of Optiques: The Science of the Eye and the Birth of Modern French Fiction, p. 269.
Romanic Review, May, 2009, Aurelie Renaud, review of Optiques, p. 389.
ONLINE
University of Pennsylvania Press Web site, http://www.upenn.edu/ (May 31, 2017), brief author profile.
University of Pennsylvania School of Arts and Sciences Web site, (May 31, 2017), author faculty profile and CV.*
Andrea Goulet
Professor of Romance Languages
Graduate Chair, French
Nineteenth- and twentieth-century French Fiction, critical theory, science and literature, detective fiction, nouveau roman. She is the author of Optiques: the Science of the Eye and the Birth of Modern French Fiction (Penn, 2006) and has co-edited journal issues on “Visual Culture” (Contemporary French Civilization) and “Crime Fictions” (Yale French Studies). Her book, Legacies of the Rue Morgue: Space and Science in French Crime Fiction (Penn Press,2016), explores scientific discourses (cartography, geology, geography) in modern French crime fiction from Gaboriau to Vargas. Her seminars and graduate courses include “Crime and the City in 19th-c. France,” “Science and Literature in France across the Ages,” “Hugo et Balzac,” "Poe's French Legacies," and “Espaces littéraires: Spatial Theory and Modern French Fiction.” She is currently Co-Chair, with Corry Cropper of BYU, of the Nineteenth-Century French Studies Association.
Office Location:
545 Williams Hall
Office Hours:
Spring 2017: MW 1-2pm
Email:
agoulet@sas.upenn.edu
Phone:
(215) 746-2190
Fax:
(215) 898-0933
CV (file):
https://www.sas.upenn.edu/french/sites/www.sas.upenn.edu.french/files/2016CV-for%20website.pdf
1
Andrea Reynaldo Goulet
Department of Romance Languages agoulet@sas.upenn.edu
University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, PA 19104
Academic Employment:
Professor, Department of Romance Languages, University of Pennsylvania
July 2016 - present
Associate Professor, Department of Romance Languages, University of Pennsylvania
August 2008 – June 2016
Associate Professor, Department of French, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
August 2006 – August 2008
Assistant Professor, Department of French, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
August 1999 – August 2006
Education:
Ph.D. in French Literature, Yale University, December 1999
Marguerite Peyre Dissertation Prize in French
M.A. in French Literature, New York University, January 1991
B.A. in Comparative Literature, Yale University, May 1989
Summa Cum Laude, Phi Beta Kappa, Distinction in the Major
Books:
Legacies of the Rue Morgue: Science, Space, and Crime Fiction in France
University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015 [304 pp].
Optiques: The Science of the Eye and the Birth of Modern French Fiction
University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006 [280 pp].
Articles and Essays:
"Teaching Les Misérables: Crime and the Popular Press," in MLA Approaches to Teaching
Hugo's Les Misérables, Michal Ginsburg and Bradley Stephens, eds. (forthcoming)
"Du massacre de la rue Transnonain aux 'drames de la rue': Politique et théâtre de l'espace,"
Romantisme, 171 (2016), 53-64.
"Apache Dancers and Savage Boxers: Choreographies of Criminal Reform from Les
Mystères de Paris to The Wire," Médias19 (2015)
http://www.medias19.org/index.php?id=21375
2
"'Whistful' Thinking: Time, Cards, and Madmen at the Fin-de-siècle (Lermina's Les Fous),"
Dix-Neuf, 18.3 (2014), 288-302.
“Le Soleil naît derrière le Louvre: Malet, Surrealism, and the Modern Explosion of Paris,”
L’Esprit Créateur, 54.2 (2014), 141-158.
"Neurosyphilitics and Madmen: The French Fin-de-siècle Fictions of Huysmans, Lermina,
and Maupassant," in Progress in Brain Research: Literature, Neurology and
Neuroscience: History and Modern Perspectives, 206. Anne Stiles, Stanley Finger,
François Boller, eds. (UK: Elsevier, 2013), 73-91.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-444-63364-4.00022-3
“France,” in Edgar Allan Poe in Context, Kevin J. Hayes, ed. (Cambridge University Press,
2013), 41-52.
"Natural History and French Culture: Symposium Commentary," in Of Elephants & Roses:
French Natural History 1790-1830. American Philosophical Society Museum (2013)
“Gaboriau’s Vague Terrain and the Spatial Imaginary of the Roman Policier,”
Formules: Revue des créations formelles, 14.
http://www.formules.net/revue/14/sommaire.html
“Lecoq cartographe: plan des lieux et terrains vagues dans le roman policier,”
Romantisme 149.3 (2010), 39-52.
“Zéropa-land: The Balkans as Shadow-Space in French Polars of the 1990s (Dantec,
Radoman),” Contemporary French Civilization 33.2 (2009), 43-61.
“Le nom du lieu: Cryptic Spaces in Un long dimanche de fiançailles,” in Sébastien Japrisot:
the Art of Crime, Martin Hurcombe and Simon Kemp, eds. (Rodopi, 2009), 165-182.
“A Morte e a Retina: Ficçôes optográficas no ‘fim-de-século’ francês,” Revista de
Comunicacâo e Linguagems, 39: Photography(ies), Universidade Nova de Lisboa
(Summer 2008) http://rcl.cecl.com.pt/edicoes/rcl-39-fotografia-s/29-contaminacoes/58-amorte-e-a-retina-ficcoes-optograficas-no-fim-de-seculo-frances
“Malet’s Maps and Butor’s Bleston: Space and Formal Play in the Roman Policier,”
L’Esprit Créateur, 48.2 (2008), 46-59.
“Legacies of the Rue Morgue: Street Names and Private/Public Violence in Modern French
Crime Fiction,” Modern Language Quarterly 68.1 (2007), 87-110.
"Emile Gaboriau." The Literary Encyclopedia. The Literary Dictionary Company (2007)
http://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=1662
“The Yellow Spot: Ocular Pathology and Empirical Method in Gaston Leroux’s Le Mystère
de la chambre jaune,” SubStance 107, 34.2 (2005), 27-46.
“Retinal Fictions: Villiers, Leroux, and Optics at the Fin-de-siècle,”
Nineteenth-century French Studies 34.1.2 (2005-2006), 107-120.
“Curiosity’s Killer Instinct: Bibliophilia and the Myth of the Rational Detective,”
Yale French Studies 108 (2005), 48-59.
3
"South Sea Daggers and the Dead Man's Eye: Foreign Invasion in Fin-de-siècle Fictions,"
Cahiers Victoriens et Edouardiens 61 (2005), 317-333.
"Tomber dans le phénomène: Balzac's Optics of Narration,"
French Forum 26.3 (2001), 43-70.
Reprinted in Nineteenth-Century Literature Criticism (Gale, vol.150)
"Blind Spots and Afterimages: The Narrative Optics of Claude Simon's Triptyque,"
Romanic Review, 91.3 (2000), 289-311.
"La Percée de l'œil: Histoire," La Revue des Lettres Modernes: Série Claude Simon (2000),
101-123.
Edited Journal Issues:
Yale French Studies 108 (Spring 2005)
Special Issue on "Crime Fictions," co-edited with Susanna Lee (Georgetown).
Contemporary French Civilization 28.2 (Summer-Fall 2004)
Special Issue on "Visual Culture," co-edited with Michael Garval (NCSU).
Book Reviews:
The Paris Zone: A Cultural History, 1840-1944, by James Cannon
Nineteenth-Century French Studies (forthcoming)
French Crime Fiction 1945-2005: Investigating World War II, by Margaret-Anne Hutton.
H-France Review, 14.14 (2014)
http://www.h-france.net/vol14reviews/vol14no14goulet.pdf
Surrealism and the Art of Crime, by Jonathan P. Eburne.
Contemporary French Civilization, 34.2 (2010), 205-207.
The Victorian Eye: A Political History of Light and Vision in Britain, 1800-1910, by Chris
Otter. RaVon: Romanticism and Victorianism on the Net, 55 (2009).
http://www.erudit.org/revue/ravon/2009/v/n55/039583ar.html
Littérature et médecine: Approches et perspectives (XVIe-XIXe siècles), eds. Andrea Carlino
and Alexandre Wenger. Bulletin of the History of Medicine 83.4 (2009), 781-782.
Discursive Geographies: Writing Space and Place in French/Géographies discursives.
L’écriture de l’espace et du lieu en français, ed. Jeanne Garane.
Contemporary French Civilization 31.1 (2007), 219-221.
Le Chant de l’arabesque: Poétique de la répétition dans l’œuvre de Claude Simon, by
Stéphanie Orace. French Review 80.4 (2007), 919-920.
Signs and Designs: Art and Architecture in the Work of Michel Butor, by Jean H. Duffy.
L’Esprit Créateur 46.3 (2006), 118-19.
4
Manet, Flaubert, and the Emergence of Modernism, by Arden Reed.
L’Esprit Créateur 25.4 (2005), 90-91.
In the Mind's Eye: The Visual Impulse in Diderot, Baudelaire and Ruskin, by Alexandra K.
Wettlaufer. French Studies 59.1 (2005), 96-7.
Honoré de Balzac: Traité de la vie élégante, ed. Marie-Christine Natta.
Nineteenth-Century French Studies 30.1.2 (2001-2002), 182-4.
Professional Activities (current):
Co-Chair, Nineteenth-Century French Studies Association
Editorial Board, Modern Languages Open
Review Editor and Editorial Board Member, French Forum
Associate Editor, Contemporary French Civilization
Graduate Chair of French Studies, Department of Romance Languages, UPenn
Graduate Group member, Program in Comparative Literature, UPenn
Faculty Director, Penn Undergraduate Humanities Forum on Translation
Legacies of the Rue Morgue
Science, Space, and Crime Fiction in France
Andrea Goulet
304 pages | 6 x 9 | 10 illus.
Cloth 2015 | ISBN 9780812247794 | $65.00s | Add to cart || Outside N. America | £56.00
Ebook 2015 | ISBN 9780812292169 | $65.00s | £42.50 | Add to cart || About
A volume in the series Critical Authors & Issues
View table of contents
"Those who love detective fiction and film—or just France—will learn here to be detectives of the city of Paris above and below ground. The ghoulish, the geological, and the sublime merge in the layers of burial grounds, literary texts, and scientific paradigms. It is a wonderful book."—Deborah Jenson, Duke University
"The astounding variety, strength, and coherence of the theoretical and conceptual frameworks—involving the cultural history of crime and detection; the history of sciences; cutting-edge urban, space, and place studies; trauma theory and psychoanalysis; a deconstructionist approach to language and textuality; a literary history renewed by a history of the print media—as well as the brilliant close readings of various embodiments of modern and postmodern crime fiction make Legacies of the Rue Morgue an absolute intellectual delight."—Catherine Nesci, University of California, Santa Barbara
Taking Edgar Allan Poe's 1841 "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" as an inaugural frame, Andrea Goulet traces shifting representations of violence, space, and nation in French crime fiction from serial novels of the 1860s to cyberpunk fictions today. She argues that the history of spatial sciences—geology, paleontology, cartography—helps elucidate the genre's fundamental tensions: between brutal murder and pure reason; historical past and reconstructive present; national identity and global networks.
As the sciences underlying her analysis make extensive use of strata and grids, Goulet employs vertical and horizontal axes to orient and inform her close readings of crime novels. Vertically, crimes that take place underground subvert above-ground modernization, and national traumas of the past haunt present criminal spaces. Horizontally, abstract crime scene maps grapple with the sociological realities of crime, while postmodern networks of international data trafficking extend colonial anxieties of the French nation.
Crime gangs in the catacombs of 1860s Paris. Dirt-digging detectives in coastal caves at the fin-de-siècle. Schizoid cartographers in global cyberspace. Crime fiction's sites of investigation have always exposed central rifts in France's national identity while signaling broader, enduring unease with violent disruptions to social order. Reading murder novels of the last 150 years in the context of shifting sciences, Legacies of the Rue Morgue provides a new spatial history of modern crime fiction.
Andrea Goulet is Professor of French at the University of Pennsylvania and author of Optiques: The Science of the Eye and the Birth of Modern French Fiction, also available from the University of Pennsylvania Press.
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Print Marked Items
Goulet, Andrea: Legacies of the Rue Morgue:
science, space, and crime fiction in France
C.B. Kerr
CHOICE: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries.
53.10 (June 2016): p1480.
COPYRIGHT 2016 American Library Association CHOICE
http://www.ala.org/acrl/choice/about
Full Text:
Goulet, Andrea. Legacies of the Rue Morgue: science, space, and crime fiction in France. Pennsylvania, 2016. 295p
Index afp ISBN 9780812247794 cloth, $65.00; ISBN 9780812292169 ebook, $65.00
(cc) 534298
PQ637
201524072 CIP
Wide ranging and well argued, this book is meant for those who want to walk the streets of Paris at night and climb
down into crypts, quarries, and catacombs to discover new connections between urban spaces, murder, detective work,
and national identity. With Goulet (Univ. of Pennsylvania) serving as a sure and steady guide, readers explore crime
fiction from the feuilletons of the mid19th century to the neopolars and cyberpunk novels of today by using a
remarkable variety of approaches: spatial sciences (cartography, geology, paleontology), psychoanalysis, history,
cultural studies, postmodern critical theory, and textual analysis. It is a journey well worth making. After positing that
Edgar Allan Poe invented French crime fiction and that his 1841 short story "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" contains
in condensed form all the tensions that have shaped the genre, Goulet skillfully traces the different strands of crime
fiction in relation to two main spatial logics: the vertical, or archaeohistorical, and the horizontal, or cartological. She
then delves into 150 years of literature from Elie Berthet's serial novel of 1854, Les Catacombes de Paris, to the
"Balkanization and schizocartographies of Dantec and Radoman." A tour de force. Summing Up: **** Essential.
Lowerdivision undergraduates and above.C B. Kerr, Vassar College
Source Citation (MLA 8
th Edition)
Kerr, C.B. "Goulet, Andrea: Legacies of the Rue Morgue: science, space, and crime fiction in France." CHOICE:
Current Reviews for Academic Libraries, June 2016, p. 1480. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA454942709&it=r&asid=40d8e307f049080aa7442cd09046e665.
Accessed 7 May 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A454942709
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Andrea Goulet. Optiques. The Science of the Eye
and the Birth of Modern French Fiction
Aurelie Renaud
The Romanic Review.
100.3 (May 2009): p389.
COPYRIGHT 2009 Columbia University
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/french/romanicreview/
Full Text:
Andrea Goulet. Optiques. The Science of the Eye and the Birth of Modern French Fiction. Philadelphia: University of
Pennsylvania Press, 2006. Pp. 272.
L'interet que manifeste Andrea Goulet, assistant professor of French a l'Universite d'Illinois a UrbanaChampaign, pour
la question de la vue et ses implications litteraires ne date pas d'aujourd'hui. Il n'est que de songer au titre<< La Percee
de l'oeil : Histoire >> (1), choisi pour l'article qu'elle a, en 2000, consacre au roman de Claude Simon. Bien que seules
quelques pages d'Optiques, etude centree sur la litterature francaise du XIX<< siecle, s'averent cette fois dediees a cet
auteura la faveur d'un epilogue destine a prolonger l'analysela permanence de la reflexion est sensible. C'est, de fait,
dans une perspective resolument interdisciplinaire que s'inscrit cet ouvrage (2), dont le soustitre, The Science of the
Eye and the Birth of Modern French Fiction, temoigne explicitement de la volonte de replacer la litterature dans son
contexte, et d'articuler, plus precisement, un genrele genre narratif, tel qu'il se deploie, en France, au XIXe siecle
avec le discours scientifique et philosophique contemporain.
On s'attardera, tout d'abord, sur l'introduction (<< The Epistemology of Optics : Seeing Subjects, Modern Minds >>),
car s'y trouvent exposes, avec une clarte et une precision extremes, la perspective choisie et les enjeux de la reflexion.
Andrea Goulet commence par rappeler deux points. D'une part, l'enjeu epistemologique que revet, dans le domaine
scientifique et philosophique, le paradigme visuel, la question de la vision s'averant fondamentalement liee a celle du
savoir, la perception du monde a la theorie de la connaissance. D'autre part, la constance avec laquelle, dans le roman
francais des XIXe et XXe siecles, le genre narratif fait appel, pour se definir, a la metaphore de la vue. << The
metaphysics of the 'visionary novel', the omniscient eye of realist narration, the positivist gaze of scientific naturalism,
the hysterical warp of decadent vision, the kaleidoscope of Proustian subjectivity, and the fragmented
antiperspectivalism of postmodern fiction >> (p. 2) : autant de topoi, points de reperes commodes que leur caractere
schematique n'empeche pas, cependant, de faire autorite en matiere d'histoire litteraire. C'est dans ce contexte que le
lien qui unit le genre romanesque a la science va etre examine. Il ne s'agira pas, bien entendu, d'un simple reperage
visant a mettre au jour, a l'interieur des textes, tels themes ou motifs empruntes a cette derniere. La reflexion se situe,
de fait, a un autre niveau, plus fondamental, car structurel : << This book argues that these questions of visual
epistemology, while scientific and philosophical in nature, fundamentally structure the semantic and symbolic logic of
the modern French novel [...] >> (p. 2). On mesure d'autant mieux l'interet d'une telle mise en relation qu'Andrea
Goulet signale d'emblee le caractere foncierement fluctuant des conceptions scientifiques en vigueur a cette epoque. Un
profond debat, relatif a la natureobjective ou subjectivede la vue, anime en effet le contexte scientifique du XIXe
siecle, et en determine l'evolution generale. Aussi l'hypothese qui gouverne l'ensemble de l'analyse estelle la suivante :
les tensions internes propres au champ scientifique rejaillissent a l'interieur du genre narratif. On mesure, de fait,
l'originalite du propos. Car si les travaux recents ayant contribue a contextualiser la notion de visionet a en souligner le
caractere culturel, historique, et non plus biologique et immuablesont relativement nombreux, il ne semble pas, en
revanche, que les consequences en aient ete tirees en ce qui concerne le domaine litteraire. Voila pourquoi Andrea
Goulet s'attachera a reconsiderer avec soin les topoi evoques plus haut, de maniere a mettre au jour, derriere la facade
illusoire de leur univocite, la complexite et les tensions qui leur sont inherentes. A l'horizon de cette etude ne s'inscrit
rien moins que la volonte d'oeuvrer en faveur d'une revision de l'histoire litteraire.
Avant d'en venir a l'analyse proprement dite, Andrea Goulet brosse un panorama rapide du regard que la science porte
sur cette question, ce qui lui permet d'eclairer tres efficacement l'arriereplan de l'etude. Elle met ainsi en lumiere le
mouvement general par lequel la position de Kepler puis de Descartes, longtemps dominante, se voit progressivement
concurrencee, a partir de l'eclosion, au XVIIIe siecle, des theories empiristes de la vision (Berkeley, Locke, Condillac).
On s'achemine ainsi d'une conception classique, selon laquelle l'optique est envisagee comme un phenomene mental,
logique, abstrait et rationnel, a une conception qui accorde toute sa place a l'experience physiologique et subjective de
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la perception visuelle. C'est dans cet entredeux instable que se deploie, de fait, la reflexion scientifique du XIXe siecle.
Cette epoque charniere, marquee par la rivalite des deux theories en presence, et durant laquelle l'interet suscite par
toutes sortes de pathologies et de phenomenes subjectifs lies a la vue va croissant, navigue entre idealisme et
empirisme. Or ce sont precisement les modalites subtiles de cette articulation entre objectivite et subjectivitecar les
deux poles, loin de s'opposer de maniere irreductible, ne laissent pas de se chevaucherqui vont permettre de mettre en
lumiere la profonde complexite du genre narratif et, par voie de consequence, de deconstruire certains cliches.
Le cheminement de la reflexion, une fois son contexte explicite, se donne a lire avec une intelligibilite parfaite.
L'articulation du plan, organise en trois parties (<< Realism and the Visionary Eye : Balzac's Optics of Narration >>,
puis << Tenebrous Affairs : Romans policiers and the Detecting Eye >> et, enfin, << Villiers, Verne, and Claretie :
Toward a FindeSiecle 'Optogrammatology' >>), combine les merites respectifs de la perspective diachroniqueapte a
rendre sensible un mouvement general d'evolution, lequel se voit ici couple a l'examen de differentes categories
romanesquesavec ceux de l'etude synchronique de textes choisisqui seule permet de mettre au jour les tensions
internes qui s'y expriment. Dans chaque cas, on le verra, Andrea Goulet part d'un lieu commun, dont la simplicite
illusoire sera progressivement deconstruite.
La premiere partie, tout entiere consacree a La Comedie humaine, s'ouvre sur le rappel de la querelle ancienne
opposant les tenants d'un Balzac realistedu cote de l'observation empirique, donca ceux d'un Balzac fantastique, qui,
a l'inverse, soulignent son idealisme visionnaire. Or c'est precisement la refutation d'une telle dichotomielaquelle a
conduit a repartir les oeuvres entre ces deux categories opposeesqui va faire l'objet des chapitres suivants. Car, bien
audela de cette binarite simpliste et artificielle, Andrea Goulet va s'appliquer a mettre au jour le dialogue, la connexion
intime de ces deux aspectsla vue, d'une part, physique et subjective et, de l'autre, la vision, transcendante et objective
dont la tension s'eclaire a la lumiere de l'ambivalence affectant la reflexion scientifique de l'epoque. C'est en
envisageant un large eventail de heros balzaciens, representatifs de differentes modalites de vision, << the inspired
voyants [...], those initiated through art or science [...], the blind seer [...], and ail of the regular heroes whose ungifted
eyes are gradually trained to perceive the workings of society [...] >> (p. 21), qu'elle devoilera les chevauchements a
l'oeuvre ainsi que la synthese, parfois difficile et maladroite, dont temoignent les romans de Balzac. Apres avoir
montre, a travers les personnages de Victor Mouillon et de Louis Lambert, que le concept balzacien de << seconde vue
>> (ou de << specialite >>) brouillait cette binarite (chapitre 1), Andrea Goulet s'attache a un autre type de vision,
subjective et physique cette fois, a travers une analyse particulierement convaincante de La Maison Nucingen et du Bal
de Sceaux (chapitre 2), romans dans lesquels elle repere la presence d'une singuliere reference au phenomene de 1'<<
afterimage >>, introduite, dans les deux cas, par le biais d'une comparaison. Si le chapitre 3, quant a lui, se penche
notamment sur La Peau de chagrin, texte qui constitue, dans La Comedie humaine, une sorte de charniere entre
observation realiste et revelation visionnaire, le chapitre 4 envisage, pour sa part, une autre forme de << seconde vue
>>, apanage d'un autre type de heros, les << inities >>, dont Rastignac ou de Marsay constituent des exemples. De fait
et les analyses consacrees au Pere Goriot et a La Fille aux yeux d'or le montrent fort bienil s'agitait plutot d'une vue
seconde, dans la mesure oU celleci, rompant avec l'instantaneite de l'illumination, implique necessairement un delai, le
deroulement d'un laps de temps correspondant a l'exercice de l'interpretation.
La deuxieme partie prend pour objet les debuts du roman policier francais (18601910). La encore, la lecture se veut
novatrice. Il s'agit de revisiter l'idee recue selon laquelle le roman policier, construit autour de la figure emblematique
du detectiveveritable heros pensant, champion du raisonnement deductifmarquerait le triomphe de la science
positive. C'est en effet une autre facette du genre qu'elle entreprend de devoiler. Car, en depit des apparences, le roman
policier des debuts, qui se fonde sur un mouvement allant des faits (des preuves) aux conclusions generales, s'avere
plus proche du modele qu'offrent les sciences inductives ou experimentales que de celui des sciences pures ou exactes.
Une fois de plus, la demonstration est d'autant plus convaincante qu'Andrea Goulet replace le genre dans son contexte
scientifique precis, en montrant qu'a l'epoque, sciences deductives et inductives sont le lieu d'une instabilite
methodologique fondamentale : << [...] the detective novel inhabits an epistemological space that shuttles uneasily
between empirical induction and abstract deduction >> (p. 109). Ainsi s'explique notamment la reference a Cuvier,
presente dans les fictions de Poe, de Doyle et de Gaboriau, et qui fait figure de modele pour le detective. Ce premier
chapitre, qui pose des bases assez generales (chapitre 5), est suivi de deux autres, centres chacun sur un texte different.
C'est a l'analyse de Monsieur Lecoq, de Gaboriau, que se consacre le chapitre 6. La structure dilatoire du roman,
directement liee au temps necessaire a l'investigation, se trouve mise en relation avec le modele empirique de la vision :
la verite ne se donne pas a lire de maniere immediate, mais necessite une reconstitution a posteriori. Andrea Goulet se
penche ensuite sur Le Mystere de la chambre jaune, de Leroux (chapitre 7), dont elle precise qu'il constitue le pendant
du precedent. Neanmoins, elle ne laisse pas de suggerer les nuances a apporter aux pretentions de Rouletabillelequel,
on le sait, ne jure que par << le bon bout de la raison >>, oppose les vertus de 1'<< esprit logique >> a celles de 1'<<
esprit observateur >> et pense signer de la sorte le triomphe absolu de la raison sur les sens.
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La troisieme partie, quant a elle, examine des textes appartenant a trois sousgenres differents : conte fantastique
(Claire Lenoir, de Villiers de l'IsleAdam), roman policier (L'Accusateur, de Claretie) et sciencefiction (Les Freres Kip,
de Verne), neanmoins rassembles autour de motifs communs, tels << the optogram (photo in/of an eye, the retinal
afterimage, the stereoscope, the ophthalmascope, and the visual hallucination >> (p. 15). De ces motifs, proprement
emblematiques d'une epoque, l'analyse va progressivement eclairer l'enjeu, qu'Andrea Goulet prend soin de lier
etroitement au contexte dans lequel ils s'inscrivent. Ainsi soulignetelle tres nettement l'interet obsessionnel que cette
fin de siecle manifeste pour l'ensemble des troubles de la perception (folie, hysterie, hypnose, hallucination, etc.) ainsi
que l'absence de separation, au XIXe siecle, entre science et occultisme. Elle presente alors l'hypothese d'un <<
'optogram moment' of troubled epistemology for findesiecle France, characterized by an obsessive interest in the
boundaries between subjectivity and objectivity, the self and the beyond >> (p. 157). La encore, le brouillage des
categoriesentre transcendance fantastique et positivisme scientisteest a l'oeuvre. Bien que nous passions ici plus vite
sur le deroulement des differents chapitres, signalons neanmoins les tres interessantes analyses consacrees a Villiers.
Outre le dernier chapitre, centre sur UEve future (chapitre 11), on notera l'etude de Claire Lenoir (chapitres 8 et 9) dont
on voit qu'elle prepare, d'une certaine facon, l'ouverture operee par l'epilogue. En effet, si le surgissement d'une image
detachee de tout referent sur la retine du personnage constitue, pour Andrea Goulet, une horreur de nature
epistemologique (<< the real horror is epistemological >>, p. 190), elle entraine aussi dans son sillage des
consequences plus specifiquement narratives, et, en l'occurrence, une rupture audacieuse avec les conventions realistes.
C'est donc a une reflexion des plus stimulantes, d'une grande clartealors meme que les references a la pensee
scientifique de l'epoque s'averent parfois complexeset dans laquelle l'efficacite de l'argumentation ne nuit ni a la
precision ni a la finesse de l'analyse, que nous sommes ici convies. Soulignons egalement, outre la richesse des
references convoquees tout au long de l'ouvrage (et qui excedent tres largement le cadre etroit du champ scientifique
considere), la presence, en fin de volume, d'un precieux index, lequel repertorie non seulement auteurs et titres
d'oeuvres cites, mais encore l'ensemble des notions importantes auxquelles fait appel l'analyse. On notera, enfin,
l'interet du prolongement que dessine l'epilogue vers un XXe siecle marque, tout a la fois, par le deploiement de grands
mouvements de pensee lies a la remise en cause radicale du positivisme et par le profond bouleversement du genre
narratif.
(AURELIE RENAUD, Universite Paris 7Universite de Nice)
(1.) Cet article a ete publie dans La Revue des Lettres modernes, serie Claude Simon, no 3 : Lectures de << Histoire
>>, Ralph Sarkonak (dir.), 2000, pp. 101123.
(2.) Elle a, precedemment, publie un ouvrage intitule Crime fictions (Andrea Goulet and Susanna Lee ed., New Haven,
Yale University Press, coll. << Yale French Studies >>, 2005). Un autre livre, provisoirement intitule Mapping Murder
" Geographies of Violence in Modern French Crime Fiction est, par ailleurs, en preparation.
Renaud, Aurelie
Source Citation (MLA 8
th Edition)
Renaud, Aurelie. "Andrea Goulet. Optiques. The Science of the Eye and the Birth of Modern French Fiction." The
Romanic Review, vol. 100, no. 3, 2009, p. 389+. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA234999728&it=r&asid=8de03db5af412fb4d626bb4e43016aed.
Accessed 7 May 2017.
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Optiques: The Science of the Eye and the Birth of
Modern French Fiction
Eduardo A. Febles
French Forum.
33.12 (WinterSpring 2008): p269.
COPYRIGHT 2008 University of Pennsylvania Press
http://www.sas.upenn.edu/french/frenchforum
Full Text:
Andrea Goulet. Optiques: The Science of the Eye and the Birth of Modern French Fiction. Philadelphia: University of
Pennsylvania Press, 2006. viii + 272 pp.
Andrea Goulet's Optiques opens up our eyes to a whole new way of seeing the history of nineteenthcentury French
literature. Her central thesis revolves around an epistemic shift registered in the science of optics from an idealized
model based on deductive a priori rules as theorized by Kepler, Descartes, and Newton to an empirical inductive
method espoused by Berkeley, Locke, and Condillac, among others. According to Goulet, this shift was inscribed in the
very fabric of various narrative practices of the nineteenthcentury as evinced in Balzac's ambiguously realist novels, in
the emerging detective genre, and in a set of findesiecle fantastic and science fiction works.
In the first part of her study, Goulet uses this optique to revisit Balzac's status in the romantic/realist debate through an
analysis of selected works from La Comedie humaineLes Chouans, Louis Lambert, La Maison Nucingen, Le Bal de
Sceaux, Seraphita, La Recherche de I' absolu, La Peau de chagrin and La Fille aux yeux d' or. Goulet provides the
scientific context to Balzac's metaphors of vision through the lens of either visionary or realist modes of looking that
refract the subjective/objective question of optics. In the narrative of La Fille aux yeux d' or, for instance, Henri de
Marsay's vision hinges on temporality for cognition as opposed to the visionary second sight of characters such as
Victor Morillon and Louis Lambert: "De Marsay's gift of second sight depends on a temporal delay. Only after going
back over, mentally, the previous evening's experience can he understand, partially, his own lack of control" (80).
Ironically, then, the fall from visionary romanticism to realist observation entails the recognition of realism's inherent
shortsightedness: "... the Paris that opens La Fille aux yeux d' or belies ... a static conception of description. Hinting at
what is to come, it already represents a fragmented space, in which attempts at unity are fated to fail" (65). When
dealing with such a monumental corpus as that of Balzac's La Comedie humaine, it becomes difficult to trace
thoroughly the epistemic shift that, according to Goulet, underlies Balzac's oeuvre. At times, the minute analysis of few
details in such works as Les Chouans is used to draw conclusions which could have been more systematically pursued.
In the second part of her study, Goulet uses as case studies Emile Gaboriau's Monsieur Lecoq (1869) and Gaston
Leroux's Le Mystere de la chambre jaune (1907)with several incursions into Arthur Conan Doyle and Edgar Allan
Poe {genre oblige)to show that the detective novel rehearses many of the issues that plagued the science of optics
during the nineteenth century. Whereas the detective genre has come to be defined as mostly deductive in naturea
private investigator uses his intellectual acumen to solve a mystery without the need to dirty his handsGoulet
successfully exposes the narrative strategies mobilized to hide the empiricist bent of these novels: "the roman policier
can function only by alternately highlighting and obscuring the logical processes of induction and deduction" (109).
Furthermore, she classifies Gaboriau's novel as a "visual bildungsroman" that recreates the logic of vision as an
acquired skill rather than as a given birthright. Finally, drawing an analogy between the sealed yellow room of Leroux's
work and the "yellow spot" ox fovea centralis of the eye, Goulet traces the ways in which empirical methods are
degraded and repressed in Le Mystere de la chambre jaune only to return and violate the sanctity of pure reason.
The last section of the book brings together various works under the rubric of optogram fictions: Jules Verne's Les
Freres Kip, Jules laretie's L' Accusateur and Villiers de 1' lsleAdam's Claire Lenoir and L' Eve future. The phenomena
described in this section transports us to the fantastic realm of images imprinted upon the retina and hallucinatory
visions that conform nonetheless to physical laws. The optical illusions in the novelsbe it the false portrait of the
supposed murderer etched in the victim's retina or the image of a ghost that inhabits Claire Lenoir's eyeserve to refute
any claims to objective vision by crossing the eye with a subjective stigma, thereby opening up a space of solipsism
and linguistic indeterminacy. The latter comes to the fore in Goulet's last chapter dedicated to hysteria, hallucination,
and L' Eve future. By questioning the ontotogical status of any "realist image," visual experiments at the end of the
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nineteenth century sound the death knell of the realist paradigm and pave the way to the nouveau roman's antirepresentational
stance.
The book folds together quite successfully scientific treatises with literary works without falling into the trap of making
one the substrate of the other. Though at times Goulet hints at the larger ideological implications of the optical debates
played out throughout the centuryespe cially in the chapter entitled 'Tropical Piercings: Nationalism, Atavism, and
the Eye of the Corpse," where she treats the problem of nationalism and empirethe gender politics of the gaze make a
short cameo appearance rather late in the book in the chapter concerning L' Eve future. Even so, Goulet's book is
highly readable, informative, and erudite. The afterimages of Optiques are sure to linger in the retina of our minds not
as nagging mouches volantes but rather as lucid visionary sight.
Eduardo A. Febles
Simmons College
Febles, Eduardo A.
Source Citation (MLA 8
th Edition)
Febles, Eduardo A. "Optiques: The Science of the Eye and the Birth of Modern French Fiction." French Forum, vol.
33, no. 12, 2008, p. 269+. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA189071245&it=r&asid=7040e6bcaa4f65c838843a302563c092.
Accessed 7 May 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A189071245